The morning after the film's North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, four months after its world premiere at Cannes, the actor has yet to fully wrap his head around a story in which he plays a plastic surgeon. Spurred by a personal tragedy, Dr. Robert Ledgard dedicates himself to medical research that takes him far outside the bounds of ethics with far-reaching consequences for Vera (Elena Anaya), the young woman who lives in his house, unseen by anyone but the doctor and his housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes). In Ledgard's romantic obsessions are shades of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and " Rebecca," but the melodrama and its perverse twists - adapted from Thierry Jonquet's novel "Tarantula" - is pure Almódovar.

"I don't have the objectivity to judge everything that was done in the movie, but I suspect what we have is Pedro at his peak," Banderas observes. "I think it's more Almódovar than Almódovar. It's almost like the juice of him, eliminating all the wheat. He just went for it, like a surgeon almost and dissecting all of us."

Banderas was 21 in 1982 when Almódovar cast him as a gay Islamic terrorist in his comedy "Labyrinth of Passion," the actor's first movie. From 1986 to 1990, he collaborated with the director four more times. In "Matador," he played a bullfighter in training who confesses to a string of killings. He was a film director's jealous lover in 1987's "Law of Desire." He was one of a suicidal woman's many distractions in 1988's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and an ex-mental patient who kidnaps a porn star in "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!"

"The Mambo Kings" in 1992 brought Banderas to Hollywood. Stardom followed and two decades flew by. The men remained friends, and nearly a decade ago, at the Cannes Film Festival, Almódovar told Banderas about the novel he wanted to adapt, "Tarantula." Years later, when Almódovar sent him the script that he wrote with his brother Agustin, Banderas already knew the story - or thought he did.

Astounded

"It wasn't going to surprise me, but the narrative process he followed really astounded me," he says. "It was unbelievable, because all the first part of the movie is just a question, with no answer whatsoever. We don't know what the heck is going on. His vision of the characters is very minimalist. He doesn't give you much information. He positions everyone in the movie in terms of morality in one way and then takes everybody and redoes the entire thing. You have to reposition yourself in front of the movie."

During pre-production, actor and director discussed psychopathology and looked at case studies of men who matched up psychologically with Ledgard. What emerged was the near portrait of a perfect fascist.

"They can believe at some point in their life that they can become God and do what they want to do," Banderas says. "I don't think there is a moment in the character where he feels what he's doing is not natural. It's natural for him. I tried for the whole entire movie not to do a general judgment about his morality, because then it's like a hump that you're traveling with in every scene. I tried to just portray him as a family doctor."

Coming back into the Almódovar universe after 20 years, he discovered an artist more minimalist, austere and concise than he remembered whose themes have become more complex, profound and mature.

Minimalist performance

He also found his own sense of complacency challenged as Almódovar urged him to fight the actor's impulse to emote, demanding of his leading man a minimalist performance.

"You go to a territory where artistic creation is and that is very uncomfortable," Banderas recalls. "Sometimes it's almost painful. You arrive there with your suitcase filled with everything you have accumulated all these years and suddenly he takes that and throws it out the window. He says, 'We're not going to go that way.'

"He asked me from the beginning of rehearsals to be very economical. He was very clear that the character has to almost be like a white-screen image where people can deposit all their fears: 'There's nobody in Hollywood that can create a monster as big as what they have in their minds. All the fears are in places in their subconscious. So if we create a character that's transparent, it's almost a vase in which they're going to start putting things in. They don't know how far this guy is going to go and which steps he's going to take.'

"So the whole entire work was pretty much about that, pretty much about containing the horses and pulling back all the time."

Banderas feared that he would come across as flat, despite his director's assurances, but he did as he was told. When he watched the finished film for the first time, it surprised him and so did his performance.

Interesting road

"I loved the movie," he says. "In terms of myself, I see that I played notes that I didn't even know that I had. It was a very interesting road. Because I respect and admire and love the man, I did something I think probably every actor that works with Pedro Almódovar should do, which is an act of faith. To work with Almódovar is an act of faith. You have to jump off a cliff without knowing whether you're going to find water or whether you're going to find rocks."

A veteran of the years in which nearly every Almódovar release was greeted with controversy, Banderas expects that "The Skin I Live In" and its dark moral universe will divide audiences.

"It's like nothing I have seen before," he says. "I don't know if audiences will think the same way. Pedro, he creates very radical opinions always. You cannot be indifferent in front of his movies. You love him or you want to kill him or both.